 Efforts to develop a leopard conservation program in the mid-1990s were shelved when wildlife researchers concluded that there was little prospect for the population's long-term survival.In 2018, a leopard was recorded by a camera-trap, thus renewing hopes for the population's survival.The Zanzibar leopard was described as a leopard subspecies by Reginald Innes Pocock, who proposed the scientific name "Panthera pardus adersi" in 1932.